Just because the USA can not defeat the CSA does not mean that the rest would automatically disintegrate. The Union could easily concentrate on holding what states it had left and would have the strength to do so. Any territories could though slip away. That would leave Deseret under the Mormons and a series of Indian tribal states; without the white man as an enemy I doubt that they would form a single confederation. After all they will not do so until the end when they were under attack and with the pressure off so to speak they would have less incentive.Replacing the rest of the U.S. could be the Cascade Republic, California, Deseret, Republic of Jefferson, Confederation of the Council Fires (Plains Indians nation, lead by the Sioux), Lake Confederation or similar name (IA, MN, IL, WI, MI, IN), Allegheny Republic (OH, WV, MD, DE, PA, NJ, NY), Confederation of New England.
I was not suggesting that my scenario was likely, but that I felt it matched what the originating post in this thread sought.Just because the USA can not defeat the CSA does not mean that the rest would automatically disintegrate. The Union could easily concentrate on holding what states it had left and would have the strength to do so. Any territories could though slip away. That would leave Deseret under the Mormons and a series of Indian tribal states; without the white man as an enemy I doubt that they would form a single confederation. After all they will not do so until the end when they were under attack and with the pressure off so to speak they would have less incentive.
Assuming that the Union holds California and every state east of and including Minnesota and Iowa what is not on Wendell's list that would leave the CSA larger in area, but the USA greater in population and industry.
All of which leaves the Confeds with an interesting conundrum. If they build a railroad into New Mexico (logically they will) how do they get the land for the final few miles to the Pacific coast?![]()
Not that improverished. New England was an economic powerhouse. However without the Great Plains to tap for resources it could grind to a halt. Given that that is were the coal for the first half of the American Industrial Revolution is, none of other North American countries continues it and thus at the turn of the twentieth century there is no American colossus to provide war loans in the Great War.All what is left of the USA is a loose confederation of impoverished states.
Not that improverished. New England was an economic powerhouse. However without the Great Plains to tap for resources it could grind to a halt. Given that that is were the coal for the first half of the American Industrial Revolution is, none of other North American countries continues it and thus at the turn of the twentieth century there is no American colossus to provide war loans in the Great War.
Substantial sources of coal exist in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and southern Ohio to supply the industrial boom in New England and upstate NEw York. With iron ore from Minnesota and Pennsylvania coal (and oil, too - commercial drilling started there in the 19th C.), your economic engine should chug along quite nicely, even if the southern states and sopme of the western ones are shorn off the Republic.
If the Pacific Republic ("Norton's Empire" for the whimsically inclined?) broke off with foreign help, whose help would that be? Britain might find a Balkanized western North America a useful brake on Yankee "Manifest Destiny", and on the Confederate version as well. And while the CSA might look thoughtfully at the slender strip of Mexican Territory separating their almost-transcontinental railroad from the Gulf of California and imagine wresting it away from Mexico, they'd likely stop short if the border between Mexico and the Pacific Republic is guaranteed by the British Empire.
If a CSA/Mexican/Pacific brangle gets sticky, it could force a wedge between the CSA and Great Britain, which lets a little heat off the USA, who would otherwise have British territory and British allies on all three of its international borders.